I conceived of this substack as an exercise in exploring philosophical anarchy, magic and homesteading, three outlandish topics hardly anybody takes very seriously, but I think have great relevance in our time.
What do I mean by homesteading? Wikipedia has it as:
“a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craft work for household use or sale. Pursued in different ways around the world—and in different historical eras—homesteading is generally differentiated from rural village or commune living by isolation (either socially or physically) of the homestead.”
Treehugger and Mother Earth News take a more expansive notion, encompassing anyone who grows much of their own food, generates electricity with solar panels or wind turbines, makes and sells arts and crafts or value-added foods etc, wherever they live, including the city or suburb. But for the purpose of this discussion, I am thinking of homesteading as an ideal.
What is more quintessential to the early American ethos than the idea of carving a homestead out of the wilderness? Notwithstanding current trends in demonizing everything about America, that is an ethos that remains in the American psyche, it is at the core of what it is to be American, it is part of what is our deep and abiding desire for freedom, even after the frontier of “manifest destiny” is long gone.
With respect to native, aboriginal peoples, I know many of you feel it too. Don’t you feel it, dear reader, that desire to get away, live off the land and be left alone, even if that seems impossible?
To be self-sufficient, growing, gathering, raising, hunting and fishing for food. Building your own house. Resilience in the face of difficulties that arise in society. Living close to the land and becoming like one with it? To be left alone to live your life as you see fit?
Obviously, that is not realistic for the vast majority of us right now. The cost of land is exceptionally high and getting more expensive, the skills for such a thing are not lost, but they are rare and there are few models. It might be a thing we idealize, until we try it, and then the bugs and hard work and starting from scratch and coming to terms with everything that is required to be truly sustainable, and the isolation remind us we are animals of a sort, we do need a connection to other humans, and nature is not forgiving of human foolishness. Most of us have very little notion, how much modernity stands between us and true homesteading, physically and psychologically, and for anyone who tries rural homesteading, that often comes as a very great shock.
So why am I talking about homesteading? Perhaps you have noticed, food prices are rising. There are increasingly food shortages globally. Supply chains are in a state of ongoing collapse. Farmers all across Europe are in revolt because of technocratic dictates that demand steep reductions in “pollution” on threat of seizing the farm (with of course no calls to reduce say, emissions from private jets.) Governments particularly in America are growing increasingly authoritarian, and many people particularly among the professional managerial class (those working for higher edu, corporations, governments) are justifying it. A lot of people quite frankly, at every level of society, are going crazy. Who wouldn’t dream of retreating to a forgotten wilderness to carve out a place to simply be, away from all the madness?
I just happen to have such an opportunity, and the skills and the knowledge. Wouldn’t I be crazy not to try?
The 80 acres in question is marginal land, sand hill country, low-lying seasonal tall grass wetlands that snake through the landscape for miles. One might walk these wetlands for a long time without seeing a building or people. The property has 35 acres of field that has long been in the conservation reserve program (CRP), 35 acres of old-growth woods, about 10 acres of wetlands including a 1-acre spring fed pond.
The general plan is to take 5 acres out of CRP, plant a big garden and start an orchard. The garden would be on the south side of the field close to the pond, the orchard on the north side sheltered from the north winter winds by the woods. I want to build a floating dock through 60+ feet of catttails to the pond, and use a mud pump to pump out solids from the pond to the garden site, thereby fertilizing the garden while creating a swimming hole in what otherwise is only about 3ft of water.
I would have to dig at least two shallow wells, to feed drip-line gravity systems, so I don’t have to spend a lot of time watering, the garden essentially watering itself, especially when I am off site working.
Expand the garden and orchard each year. Start logging the woods for fuel and lumber. There is enough wood there to build a very beautiful custom house and barn. Logging the woods will open it up, the undergrowth in much of the woods are young maples, they would shoot up and create with time a sugarbush. Start keeping bees. After about ten years it could be a fully operational fruit winery with most of the necessary sugars on site.
That’s the basic outline. I am 49, perhaps coming to this vision late. I’ve been thinking about it 20 years at least. There is a lot standing in the way, it is a lot of work. But work that I love is not work as much as fulfilling of body, mind and spirit. Here are a few pictures of what I did in the city.
With the plethora of television shows dedicated to homesteading in recent years, there remains a desire for such a life, if mostly lived vicariously. I suspect as energy becomes more expensive, as life in some cities becomes more of a challenge, there may be a resurgence in the desire for the lived experience. I believe too, becoming more self-sufficient is good for the soul and it would be good for America. We as a people and a nation are very much in need of healing, and the values of homesteading can do a lot to help with that, to help us get back to the core of what it is to be an American.
I’ll be discussing healing in the next post. Thanks for reading.
A beautiful vision. I hope you succeed.
Looking forward to more posts about this.
There are some family commitments I have to deal with for the next year or 2 before I can throw myself into something along these lines.
I am particularly interested in hearing about the challenges of being that far north, growing season and all. Are you planning on having any animals? For myself I think chickens would be mandatory. Don't like the idea of having to buy feed though. Cheers.